Tuesday, July 10, 2012

“To be, or not to be:
that is the question.” But is it really? To all my fellow Millennials (aka the
Net Generation) out there, I suggest that we turn to a new query. For Hamlet,
his physical being was at stake. He stood at a cross roads: (1.) try to live in
an unlivable world where his mother dove into the incestuous sheets of his
father’s killer or (2.) escape everything and leap headlong into the undiscovered
country. While we are not contemplating suicide, we too face a fearsome danger.
From the time we were old enough to watch cartoons, we have been prey.

We are fighting not
for our mortality but, instead, for our minds. It is difficult to maintain some
sense of self when ubiquitous media, TV shows, and ads attempt to define who we
should be and how we should think. This trend is exacerbated by the
anti-intellectual culture so pervasive in the West; however, within American teen
culture, the trend is even more pernicious. We are told not to think but to
buy. We are told not to understand but to memorize. We are told not to question
but to conform.

For Hamlet, death
makes cowards of us all. In our age, however, apathy coupled with consumerism
makes fools of us all. Instead of “to be or not to be,” we should ask ourselves
“to ponder or not to ponder”/ “to think or not to think.” Because our beliefs
are so heavily influenced by outside factors, it is only when we think about
why we hold certain beliefs that we can determine whether or not they are our
own. As I post this first entry, I sound a clarion call to rethink everything—all
the time.

Please join me as I
ponder perchance to dream of a different, better world.